On the way to Hendrik's office – it
would indeed be a crowded office, as while most were going for their
'real' breakfasts, I, Esther, Paul, Willem, Sarah, Annistae, Deborah,
Hans, and Anna – would be 'taking our meals' in there. I quietly
asked Deborah regarding this mould as to just who made it.

“I think this is a Heinrich mould,”
she said, “It spoke of fourteen-line shot, which is a bit small for
what most people consider stiff, but if we put enough tin...”

“Shot that size wants a fair amount
of tin and that hardening mix to come out right,” said Sarah. “You
want one part in ten of each metal, and eight parts of lead once
you've cleaned it – and that makes for some very hard shot that
tends to be a lot shinier than is the usual.”

“We can do that now,” said
Deborah. “Now, that type does not eat one's barrel?”

Here, Deborah became rather
distracted, as both guards were holding 'short muskets', and while
one was an 'assembled in Ploetzee' model – decent for looks, and
good for performance, if I went by the look of what I saw, as this
one was an 'upgraded' model, one that wanted a small stack of gold
monster coins and the parts
to get – the other was one of those I'd made.

Deborah was
staring at that gun, and she muttered about 'Heinrich guns' once we
were inside Hendrik's office.

“Good that we have another of those
moulds,” said Hendrik. “Hans, you do try to keep that one you
have warm as much as you can, don't you?”

“He does, and he's not the only
one,” said Anna. “We recently got onto some of that shiny stuff,
but it's supposed to eat softer barrels.” Pause, then, “she
knows how to plate some up so it doesn't do that, and lead is scarce
enough down that way that they had to use whatever they could.

“It was very scarce,” said
Annistæ. “We did not wish the Cabroni to get their smelly
hands upon our lead, so we never sold that stuff, and when we ran
into Särpientæ
do Mallé, we took their headless bodies back to get the lead
out of them.”

“Yes,
and what did you do to the rest of them?” asked Hans.

“Those
work well for farolcumbusteblé, so they were boiled down, and
their fat skimmed,” said Annistæ. “That causes the shot to
drop, while the fat in them comes to the surface, and then what
remains goes into our manure-heaps, same as Cabroni once they are
dead and without their heads.”

“Boil
them down too?” I asked, meaning the witches.

“They
have little fat,” said Annistae, “so we would screen our manure
to retrieve the lead for them, and then we would search their towns
once they had been burned and those living in them killed.” Pause,
then, “it was common to find small amounts of lead among the ashes,
but those smelly Cabroni down there need much warm lead to
cease with their noise and trouble.”

“That's about the only time one of
those places is quiet,” said Sarah. “Otherwise, they are never
quiet.”

A tap at the door,
and Georg came. He'd obviously been hungry, though Georg with a red
face had a distinctly comical look.

“I see you like
cherry jam also,” said Deborah. “If one goes into such a town
about two hours before dawn, then it is relatively quiet, as that is
when those thugs are asleep.”

“Ai, that is
when one sets fire to those places,” said Annistæ.

“I hope you can
do that with the fifth kingdom house,” said Georg morosely. “Those
people are involved in this business, and that much I know.”

“That place will
go up in smoke soon enough,” I said. “You were speaking about,
uh, settling down smaller versions of that vast and stinky place,
dear?”

“I might not
recall many tales, but I have heard some talk from her about what
happens at times should some of those Mule people take a dislike to
one of those places,” said Deborah. “I have a much better idea
as to what happens now.”

“Yes, and how is
it you know?” asked Hans. He was grinning.

“We did
something like what those people do yesterday, Hans,” spat Deborah,
“and I want rockets and one of those things to launch them!”

“Ah, so you want
rockets,” said Hans. “They might be trouble to make.”

“Uh, no,” I
said. “They ship us the parts, and we put them together. A
session on the couch, with a small table, four of us, and we could do
up a dozen inside of an hour – and these will be modern
rockets, not those like we have now.”

“How would they
be different?” asked Hendrik.

“Mostly be
faster, work better in general, and then, we would have these special
things that go to the front that are so strange I barely have words
to describe them.”

“They sound like
the nubs for a tipped shell,” said Hans. Hendrik understood those.
“They are not those things, though, as if one of them gets onto an
Iron Pig, it just needs to be fired at that swine, and that thing
will find that pig.”

“How is it you
know?” asked Sarah.

“I was shooting
one of them, in a dream,” said Hans, “and I had to wear this
thing like he has for this strange thing that gets music, and then it
started squealing like a burnt Shoet.”

“Most people
would not endure that, Hans,” said Anna. “I might, as I have to
when tuning my violin, but still.”

“Yes, and I have
heard you do that, so I was not bothered,” said Hans. “Now, when
these things squeal, you need to listen for how they squeal, as you
want that noise to be as loud and as high as it can go, as then, you
squeeze off your rocket, and then it will cork that swine good.”

“Cork it?”
asked Hendrik.

“Yes, either its
mouth or its rear,” said Hans. “It does not matter what that
swine does, either, as these things go into trees like a hornet when
it is angry, only so fast you think them to be a hot-loaded
round-shot from a cannon that is worse than what we were shooting
last night, and then it will find that pig unless it decides it
wishes to sup with Brimstone on its own.”

“They do that,”
said Deborah. “Spray a lot of stuff out the back, so you want your
rear-way clear.”

Hendrik was
getting nervous just hearing Deborah. I could tell he had visions of
'man-portable rotten cannons' that leaked out of the back end every
time.

“That sounds
like a rotten cannon,” he said a second after Deborah ceased
speaking.

“No, they are
not those,” said Deborah. “They are much easier to use, much
faster to use, and then if you center a coach or a house, it will
stay centered, more or less no matter what it does.” Deborah
paused, then, said, “it was a near thing for us anyway, as that
place went straight to hell before I could count to three once he'd
been told to get us right out of there.”

“Yes, and mining
towns to the south usually do not explode like they have read old
tales,” said Annistæ. “That place has much metal, and
though it is bad metal, there is a way to take that metal and
make it good.”

“Yes?” said
Hendrik, suddenly interested. I noted the chair someone had put
behind me, and sat down, this to rub both knees. “It has to do
with this one recently erected furnace, correct?”

“Cé,
in this one town that has a flower for its symbol,” said Annistæ.

“Flower?” I asked. I could, for
some reason, smell those strange lilies. Most of them had
survived, and we would need to keep them safe from all of those
stinky southern-imported thugs.

“Cé,
a pretty red one, one that smells good,” said Annistæ.
“They commonly have thorns, but there is one place which has them
without thorns, and I have seen that place and who
lives there, and I will remember the smell of those flowers for a
very long time.” A pause, then, “sometimes, she smells a bit
like one of them.”

“Sarah?” I asked.

“Cé,
she does, though now is hard for her,” said Annistæ. “If
she smells of that type of flower, then there are no Cabroni in the
area, that and she is well-rested. If things are otherwise, or she
is tired, then she needs scent, as she is supposed to smell that
way.”

“Oh, my,” I
said. “Do you...”

“Cé,
it is important, especially when you are fighting, to smell good,”
said Annistæ. “It reminds you who and what you are fighting
for, and Cabroni hate the smell of flowers.”

“I do not,”
said Esther. “I like flowers, and if scent could be had,
I would wear it commonly.”

“Hence a need
for bathing,” I said. “More are expected, aren't they?”

Hendrik nodded,
then, “much of what needs to happen concerns those in this room, as
most of you seemed relatively unaffected by that one room.” Pause,
this to make a spitting noise. “Ballroom? That place always felt
bad, and I've wondered why for the longest time, and now we
know a part of it.”

“Thank you for
reminding me, sir,” I said. “We need to clear out the fetishes
in this place, as while it it isn't a control-room fit for witches,
the witches have definitely given it a lot of attention.
Everyone, spread out, two to a group, and try to feel these things.
If there are fetishes, or you suspect...” Here, I went to the edge
of the rug, peeled it back, and found a carefully folded piece of
paper.

“Get clear,
everyone,” I said. “Old curse, been there for ages, and it's
bad.”

As if that had
'set the thing off' it erupted in soot, which I asked to find the
eyes of witches and 'dust them good'.

The soot vanished
with a thump, but when I came to where the paper had laid, I found a
faint bluish-white outline, and putting my hands upon it, it was as
if I knew instinctively what was present. “First, this one had the
hiding curse,” I murmured. “Then, it had several still-potent...
Duh, this was a list in those Red books of Cardosso – how to
control one's leader like a puppet if he's not a witch, make him into
a witch if he's even a little inclined that way – and if he is
a witch, then make him a worse one, and finally, in all cases, make
this office's occupant into a puppet to be controlled by some
people...”

I paused, then
said, “this is why we need to clear your office and living
quarters, as you're dealing with a lot of fetishes in here –
they've been putting them in here for years, more years than you've
been alive!”

“Double that and
then some, and that one you just found was a key foundation to that
interlocking mess of cursed objects used to do just what you said.”
Pause, then, “now the others can help. Let the women go in the
living quarters with Maria, and you look this place over out here.”

“Oh, so they get
all the fun?” I murmured.

“No, getting
tossed is not fun,” said Anna. “I hope I do not get
tossed more, but at least we all have been tossed once or more.”

“More soft
things in there than here,” I murmured. “Mind that soap-dish,
ladies – they really did up the bathroom.”

“What?” gasped
Hendrik. “The bathroom is full of fetishes?”

“I think so!”
screeched Deborah. “It stinks like a witch-hole!”

“Is that just
backed up plumbing, or..?”

The muffled thud
that resulted was enough to get Hendrik up and rushing into his
quarters, but when he returned a moment later, he muttered about
chemicals and 'at least Maria has done her share of those'.”

“Does she have
soot?” asked Hans.

“Yes, and so
does everyone else in there,” said Hendrik crossly. “Now I know
it's important, and we'd best do all we can to find those things, as
I think you dealing with that one... I could see that one
glow red for a minute.”

“Yes, and I can
see something nasty in here,” said Esther. “Maria, we may look
like we got into some especially bad chemicals, but this is normal
for dealing with witch-holes. It mostly washes off... Oh, good. You
have decent soap, even if this soap-dish is the worst witch-tool I've
ever seen. I'm not going any closer to it.”

“Uh, go find a
witch's watch-pocket, and set him alight – oh, and that perfume
bottle that has been there for ages – go find a witch-consort, and
roost in that woman's support-garments.”

“You have no
idea what you just did, do you?” asked the soft voice. “You just
caused a huge riot in the second kingdom house.”

“Huge riot?” I
asked.

“Yes, because
that district was run 'as per the dictates of the black book', and in
their case, their rules were from a large one – and seeing 'El
Supremo' in convulsions means only one thing.”

“What?” I
asked.

“Brimstone is
most displeased with them, and hence they're now at each
other's throats, as in witchdom, suspicions and crimes are one and
the same, and dealt with identically – and what 'justice' there
exists is the summary species.”

“Summed up as 'I
want it, I am taking it now, and I will kill anyone who stands in my
way',” I said. “Power does what Power wills, and that is to
increase its reach and potency – which means that the witch with
the most, uh, power runs the entire thing, and... El Supremo?” I
asked.

“Yes, that
witch-woman,” said the soft voice. “There may be but a few
districts where that is currently the case, but if you find one, you
may be certain the person who is waited on hand, knee, foot, and
tongue is one of those strange-looking 'beings' you once saw.”

“I still ended
up upon the floor,” said Anna. “I just wish I could give every
nasty fetish in this room to a witch, and make them eat those things
for meals!”

The gout of soot
that 'launched' several sooty women out into the room to then land in
a pile included Anna, and when Hendrik came to look at his room, he
said, “ugh! It looks like a coal-mine in there now.”

“Yes, but you
can clean up that soot,” said Esther. “I have no idea how many
fetishes went up when she said that, but only that one woman from the
Valley can otherwise...”

“Aieeeh!” came
a deafening shriek, then what sounded like a 'top-of-one's-lungs'
prayer. I could hear Annistæ invoking God in such a strange
manner that only when Hendrik's rooms exploded and everyone
inside them came running out with soot chasing them that I wondered
what had happened.

“That got more
of those things,” said Anna crossly. “I must have gotten
knowledge of what she was saying, as I understood it perfectly.”

“That first
word?” I said.

“I think that's
close to what I might say if I found a rat in my potato sack,” said
Anna, who was dusting off a lot of soot.

“Anna, and the
other ladies, as well as Hendrik's quarters, do not need soot,” I
said. “Dust those witches that are traveling to Waldhuis with
soot, lots of it, but we do not need it in here.”

As I watched, Anna
became steadily cleaner, until the soot was almost entirely gone from
her. I then heard another of those terrifying yells from Annistæ,
only this time, she came out of the room without having a trace
of soot on her.

“What happened
now?” I asked.

“The dust, it is
gone!” she said. “All of that bad Carboné
is gone!”

“So
that is what they call soot,” said Hans.

“No,
not normal soot, even the type that chemicals make, Hans,” said
Anna. “That uses a different word. That word is better translated
as 'hell-soot', and it comes from fetishes, according to her.”

“And now, we must find the rest of
these things,” I said, as I began scanning the books. For some
reason, I could feel a fetish, and when I came to a bookcase, I moved
it out and nearly yelled at what had been hiding behind it.

“A calender, or rather, a
witch-calender,” I said. “Sarah, please come here, and bring
everyone so they can see this awful thing.”

“Awful is right,” said the soft
voice. “They didn't have to know much about those, merely copy
them well, and that one killed over a dozen witches in the process of
making it.”

“A dozen?” I murmured. “Poisonous
inks, uh, toxic paper-production processes, need to be drunk as a
stinker to run those mills, so now and then a witch falls in and is
incorporated into that run of witch-paper. Probably gives that
special cachet.”

“More than you might believe
possible, as that's one part that got left out of those directions,
and when a witch falls into the apparatus, those curses become
cemented in place – hence
that particular document had enough spirits bound to it to kill any
witch handling it within a matter of days unless said witch had as
much curse-power as Cardosso.”

“So we need to
send this one to the Blomfels combine main headquarters,” I
murmured. “No, not just yet. Need to touch this thing up a bit.”

I then made to
touch the vile-looking thing, and as my right index finger came
closer, I could see what was starting to look like an electrical
discharge coming from my finger to the evil-looking document.

“Ssh,” said
Esther. “Watch. I suspect he's just the sort to paint that one
statue I want to carve, as he's got a good sense of color.”

“This line –
oh, increment those numbers three digits,” I said. “Darken this
color, lighten that one, change this red to green, so it
really goes places and does things...”

The silence that
was accruing as I changed this calendar were astonishing, but when I
suddenly on a whim drew a round happy face sticking its tongue out at
the witches while waving its arms and its hair, then the whole
thing took on an utterly new meaning. Finally, I had an odd
question.

“Terminal
constipation,” I murmured. “Let's see – this one backwards,
this one upside down, this one – oh, change it to this other...”

“What are you
doing?”

“Corking those
Blomfels people up solid,” I said. “They think that retaining
dung helps them to smell worse and be nastier witches, so this will
act like a solid concrete plug in their bottoms.”

The calender was
changing even more, now that I was dealing with it at a higher level
of abstraction, and its colors began to change and 'come through in
waves'. That gave me an idea.

“Oh, and they
need to have the horrors on a routine basis,” I said. “So
much so that they only places they are free from them is their
privies, so if they leave their privies, that stuff shows up
around them, and if they stay there... Ah, ha! I know just the
thing. They need to suck on weeds, especially Veldter weed, so they
become so corked that they explode.”

“Yes, if they
don't die in a big hurry,” said the soft voice. “Now send that
thing off to them before matters get too out of hand.”

“Oh, OK,” I
said. “Now go find the uppermost head of that nasty combine, that
really stinky wretch that juggles that mess, and then become glued
to his fetish-desk so he cannot get it off – oh, and glue that desk
to the floor, such that it becomes impossible to remove, and
then glue his eyes to that thing, so wherever he is, waking or
sleeping, from now until he sups with Brimstone, he's always
seeing that thing.” Pause, then, “now go, and give that man and
his people a foretaste of hell.”

The calender –
or Källendäré, more properly – vanished with a
soft plop, and Georg gasped. He then turned to me, asking me as I
began once more examining the books and other matters, “what will
that do?”

“I am not
terribly sure,” I said. “I asked that the head of that combine
see the horrors all the time and become severely constipated, so
he'll be in the privy a lot – and hopefully, it isn't just him
having the fun.”

“He will also
become progressively more insane,” said the soft voice. “He may
have been getting into enough whiskey for three mining town thugs,
but he was sufficiently inhabited that it was having a small fraction
of the expected effect.”

I then heard a
faint bellow, then a howl of rage followed by the banging of a
revolver. The booming roars sounded like a dragoon was in use.

“It just got
onto his desk,” said the soft voice, “and now, he's seeing this
thing and has no idea of what it means.”

“He understood
the one put here, as he had it done – or did he?”

“His grandfather
commissioned it,” said the soft voice, “which is the main reason
why the Blomfels combine is so large. They have a sizable
witch-library, one book of which contains the meaning of those things
that are extant, and he's quite familiar with them.” Pause, then,
“he is really not liking that face spitting at him while making
'bad noises'.”

“Bad noises?”
asked Deborah. Everyone else was utterly agog at what had happened,
and I could tell why: that one under the rug was a big player, but
this infernal calender provided much of the 'power' – and in my
playing games with it and then sending it back to its issuer, I had
confounded him.

I then illustrated
what 'bad noises' most likely were, that being 'the raspberry' sound
made by sticking one's tongue out and blowing. Deborah thought this
altogether amusing, but what we heard next took things from 'silly'
to 'no words for it'.

“That whole
combine is being confounded, as every single witch belonging
to it has two things happening,” said the soft voice.

“Yes, and what
are they?” asked Hans.

“They all have
to go worse than if they drank down an entire beer-jug full of
uncorking medicine,” said the soft voice, “but they are corked so
badly that they are utterly unable to.”

“Uh, huh,
terminal constipation,” I mumbled. “Just the thing for witches –
they like to eat squabs and other indigestible lard-filled foods, so
now they get their fondest wish: they are corked as thoroughly as if
they'd eaten sacks of cement, and they have to go, so they wish to
live in the privy while having unrelenting instances of the horrors.”

“Ah, then I
think I want some,” said Hans. “If it corks witches, then I
think I want it.”

“Why?” asked
Anna. “I suspect getting it down them may prove troublesome.”

Hans shook his
head, then asked, “what is it?”

“Uh, a species
of m-moldable stone,” I said. “Hans, there should be some of
that stuff being used at the shop inside of a week's time, either
that or mortar, and cement is like a very fine-grade type of mortar.”

“They will be as
if they swallowed rocks,” said Anna. “Now I would watch myself,
as I can feel something in this area. It's probably hiding in one of
these books...”

I reached up,
grabbed one of the volumes, then held it by its spine and shook it.
Anna was correct as to nature, but substantially off as to quantity,
as here, no less than four sheets fell out, and as they hit the
floor, then all went up in smoke.

Thick, sooty,
coughing smoke.

“Blomfels
privies, please,” I said. “They need to think that stool has
teeth so it bites them in the rear, and the inside of their places
needs to be so sooty that they come out 'full-corked and
black-faced.”

“Why are you
going after that combine so much?” asked Georg.

“They're
troublesome,” I said. “I was told they own a great deal, and had
a lot of money – and in the varied worlds of witchdom, money
is equivalent to power.” Pause, then, “oh, and cause them much
trouble, such that, oh, several of them become manic and gamble like
absolute fools.”

“They already do
that,” said Sarah. “Now what does this word manic mean?”

“Uh, cannot
sleep, act like they're absolutely crazy...” I murmured.

“Those people
already do that,” said Sarah. “What you are doing is
making them more so?”

“Very much
so,” said the soft voice. “Many of them will start taking those
drugs in an attempt to escape what he unloaded on them, and that will
be their doom.”

“Good,” said
Georg. “That bunch that put a fowling piece to me some time ago
was from that place, and...”

“What?”
squawked Hendrik.

“They tried what
some wretch called a double-barreled inquest,” said Georg. “It
was why I was forced to take in that stinky witch Hieronymus – it
was do that or die, and not just me, but all of my relatives.”

“Were it just
you..?” I asked.

“I would have
told those stinkers to shoot me and get it done with,” said Georg,
“but since it was over a hundred people then and more yet now, I
could not do so.”

“That sounds
like the worst kind of witch-bribe,” said Sarah. “Those are very
hard to fight against unless all of your relatives live in their own
fortified town, like mine do.”

“Yes, I know,”
said Georg morosely. “Those Blomfels people were behind that, and
then they were behind other things, and I suspect they had a hand in
what happened this morning, even if I don't have a clue as to how
this other matter happened.”

“Good, then
perhaps you can tell me what you know while they find the rest of the
fetishes,” said Hendrik. “It feels a lot different in here
already.”

“Best be
careful, Hendrik,” said Anna. “Keep that machine pistol handy,
in case someone decides to crash the door and cause trouble.”

“Me?” asked
Georg.

“No, not you,”
said Anna. “One of those people he thumped with the legs of a
supplicant – those that are still cleaning up that mess he made out
there. We had three of them try for us while we were trying to learn
in that place that should have been called a coven-room but everyone
called it otherwise.”

“I would have
called it a rodent for cleaning,” said Esther. “Now what is this
here..?”

The resulting
thump tossed several of us together, and for some reason, I was glad
I was on the bottom, even if Sarah ended up on top of me and Esther
fell atop Sarah.

“Urgh,” said
Sarah. “Esther, get up. This is like being between an upper and
lower millstone, and you're the upper one.”

“Sorry, Sarah,
but we both know how fetishes are, and this place has enough to make
me wonder just how much time and effort the witches put into it.”

“They put enough
work into this thing to make me wish odor, estéa
buén,” said Annistæ. “You were calling it
scent, but after today, I hope I can get some that smell like
those nice red flowers, as I want to wear it.”

“You?” asked
Anna, as she got up from the floor.”

“Yes, it is best
after a hard day or during a hard fight, and this is reminding me of
a bad fight, one where many are hurt and some die,” she said. “One
wants reminders of nice things then, as it helps one fight better.”
A sneeze, then, “and this trouble makes me wish for being dressed
fit for chemicals.”

“What is that
like?” asked Anna.

“It is a great
deal to wear, but it is what is needed to deal with many chemicals
safely,” sand Annistæ, “and if they do what a lot of
chemicals do, then it is much easier to clean oneself off.”

“Sounds like
this clothing at the Abbey,” said Anna. “Does it do other
things?”

“Yes, if you
must deal with chemicals that smell bad, it keeps most their stink
out of your nose,” said Annistæ. “Now, I can feel some bad
witch-writing... It is in this book here, but I think whoever did
this one wrote it in the book, and hence we must be careful so if it
goes to where Cabroni wish to be, it does not take the rest of the
book with it.”

I picked up the
hefty book, then set it down on the floor. With Annistæ
looking over my shoulder, I waved my hand, and saw the pages flow.

“How is it you
do that?” she asked. “You do not know, do you?”

“No, not really,
but it does come in handy when you've got a lot to do... There it
is. Wonderful – smelly blood-writing, though this stuff is older
than I am.” I put my finger on it, then said, “now, off with the
blood, but leave behind what that smelly wretch meant in plain
language, so we can determine who commissioned it and why, as a lot
of this stuff is connected.”

The blood lifted
off the page, hovering in midair, and I wondered just who needed an
especially unpleasant nightmare so as to 'get through to them'. For
some odd reason, I thought to once more 'pound on' those unpleasant
people named Blomfels – though in this case, I knew just the
nightmare they needed to see, and more, just who were those who
needed to see it.

“They need to
see the Sand Man arise from their foundry heap, and then devour...
No, not that. Too easy.” I paused, thought a moment, then said,
“no, this needs to coat those awful shot-glasses those people like,
so that it never rinses off and never goes away, and every gulp of
high-test now tastes like it is truly High.”

“Now why did you do that?” said
Anna.

“They like
High Meats, so they should enjoy High Drinks,”
I said. “Really make them stink awful, oh, and this stuff gives
them such wonderful versions of the horrors, also – ones where they
have these big ninety-legged creatures
a yard long that tend to show up in their witch-undies, and, uh,
firebugs in those expensive carved armoire chests they like, and then
the one with the two headed raven with a one-word vocabulary, only
this thing is speaking 'Nevermore' in the Valley's language, and
since these foundry people are constantly trashed,
they think someone of the title of 'El Vato Loco' is coming for
them.”

“There are no
such Totems,” said Annistae, “so they will think that bird a to
be a black rooster, and they do not like roosters
coming for them.” In saying this, Annistæ had meant 'they do
not like my people coming for them', as while 'the Fighting
Mule' was bad enough, 'the Black Rooster' simply tended to be
everywhere at once, fought with unusual skill and tenacity –
much like a fighting cock of that color from where I came from –
and indeed, that bird did not quit until it was dead, and it
took a lot of killing to deal with – and that was one
fight no Blomfels man in his right, left, or terminally-trashed mind
wanted to deal with.

“Well, I guess
they're going to get clawed, scratched, and, uh, ripped up,” I
said. “Now, where are the rest of these things. I can feel more
of them in here... I think there's one behind this bookcase here.”

It was hiding,
though this one was brass, clinch-nailed on near the bottom, fairly
small, and so old that seeing a fetish so hazed with red made me
wonder just what to do with it – other than if Blomfels had any of
those infernal witch-women, one of them needed to get this thing in
its support-garments.

“Especially
those things on the chest, whatever they actually are,” I said.
“Those things act as if they're alive, don't they?”

“I've seen what
they do with those,” said Anna ominously. “I saw one man knocked
silly by one of those women, and she used whatever those things are
on her chest to thump him in the head.”

“What?”
I screeched.

“Just what I
said,” said Anna. “I had to help him wake up, in fact, and he
had a very swollen face, much as if someone had used a fryer on his
head.”

“I've seen them do that also,”
said Esther. “That's why I know those things are not
glands. I do not know what
they are, but I do know they are not
glands – as no mere gland can move like I've seen those things do,
and then no gland is as hard as a rock, and then no gland hits as
hard as a rolling round-shot when they've been fired a far distance
away and they've getting used to being on the ground again.”

“What?” I
asked.

“Those things
roll a lot, and they sometimes jump then, which is why
you do not want to touch a fired round-shot until it has come to a
complete stop,” said Esther. “I've heard of those northern
people being flung up into trees by bounding round-shots, and they
usually do not get themselves back down.”

“They don't?”
I asked.

“Not when
they've been tossed well up into a tree and that thug has broken an
arm and a leg,” said Esther. “It was not the commonplace break,
either, but the kind that usually means at best a long, slow
recovery and permanent crippling injuries, so with those people, they
usually kill those injured that way.”

“Kill?” I
asked.

“Three of their
archers turned that man into a needle-cushion,” said Esther.
“That's what they usually do with people who cannot keep up –
they kill them on the spot, and the same happens for any witches that
are from hereabouts. They do the same thing to their people, because
they figure that person both chose to get hurt and then did so to
cause those not injured trouble.”

“Sounds
familiar,” I said. “Now, the next fetish... It's over in this
strange thing that looks like a closed bookcase but is not one of
those, and it's where... Oh, my.” I walked straight to this
thing, then opened its doors. It was the 'museum' itself, and seeing
runes cut into its backside behind a thin painted cloth screen showed
just how tricky the witches doing this work actually were.
“Here, help me quickly...” I began passing the things out of
this 'cabinet' as fast as I could, now and then having to handle
things with great care. I found that this was where Hendrik kept
that one nightmare-conjuring ax, sword, and dagger, though I could
tell that Deborah thought the last a suitable 'sword' of sorts.

“Non, Deborah,
none of that stuff, as it has bad-writing on it, like out of one our
old tales,” said Annistæ. “They would write curses that
way.”

“Uh, that one is
not a curse, but they use those for common writing up there as well
as doing curses,” I said, as I passed out gear to the others, who
were putting it wherever they could all over the 'main rug'. “That
part on that dished section there says this thing got some meteoritic
iron in its third remaking, hence it started out a lot better than
their usual, but once I did something to them that I still don't
understand...”

“I hope you can
do something like what I have heard of you doing,” said Hendrik,
“as those two swords made for guards were stolen out from under
Georg in spite of his best efforts to prevent them from vanishing.”

“I was told as
much,” I said as I worked feverishly. “What did they leave in
this thing... No you do not. Here, help clear this thing out. This
cabinet itself is a stinking fetish, even more than I
knew...”

That got everyone
clearing the thing out, and once it was empty, I waved it toward the
door. The cabinet lurched off the ground, then Georg opened the door
and I ran after it, waving it on. It began to billow smoke and fire,
the flames trying to push me away, but I kept running after it,
herding it away from Hendrik's office. A door to General's Row
showed, I kicked it open, grabbed the chest bodily through its
billowing flames, and then slam-pushed it inside using my shoulder.

I then pulled the
door to, and ran backwards. Not three steps from the door, the door
I'd stuffed the thing in so as to roost in General's Row exploded so
hard that I was flung backwards up the hallway and hit to tumble and
roll nearly to the guard-bench.

“That one was
bad,” I muttered, as I got up. “What was that smelly thing, a
well-disguised armoire chest? One made of witch-wood, fastened with
witch-grade glue, made by witches, and cursed by witches more than
that cloth-covered batch of rune-carvings that I saw through that
nasty veneer?”

“Precisely, and
it was the strongest fetish in the whole place,” said the soft
voice. “More importantly, it was made on these premises.”

“When?” I
asked.

“About eighty
years ago, when this was 'witch-country' in the truest sense of the
word, and that place called the boatwright's shop could best be
called 'the first kingdom's worst fetish-factory' – which it was at
the time, and only Cardosso's own example beat it for power then or
now.”

“What?” I gasped.

“It was the head
fetish,” said the soft voice. “The rest of the fetishes in
there, what few of them remain, are neither particularly good at
hiding nor terribly powerful, so you-all should clear the place
inside of twenty minutes without any more of you getting tossed or
sooted up.”

It took nineteen
minutes by the clock, but these were nineteen minutes that each felt
closer to an hour each, with now, us split into pairs, we could find
fetishes everywhere – I removed no less than three 'smokers'
from Hendrik's desk alone, another 'smoke-bomb' from the underside of
his trash can – it was part of what the manufacturer had put there
to make it a 'powerful fetish' – and then, two sulfur-candles from
a pair of 'looted' student's lanterns that had come from somewhere.

“Where did those
come from, General's Row?” I asked.

“Good light
sources are hard to find, and Lukas brought those here,” said
Hendrik. “I had no idea they had fifth kingdom candles in them.”

“There were
enough fetishes in here so that you knew almost nothing beyond
the ability to act like a witch,” said Sarah, as she followed the
other women into the suite of rooms. Within moments, I could hear
talk about finding loads of fetishes, with one or more of the
women running out to toss the smoking items out into the hallway.
This was causing no small consternation among the trio of guards,
until Esther came out with a small basket and tossed it outside, this
to come back in trailing wisps of gray smoke.

“They know what
they are now, as I told them,” she said. “I've handled
witch-yarn before, but I never saw stockings that worked made of that
stuff.”

“I'd best get
their yarn, then,” said Sarah. “Here's more of that stuff, a
whole big sack of it, and all of it nothing but witch-yarn.”

“I know where
that belongs – In another of those witch-women's clothing, or
rather, in her support garments – one for each, uh lump, in fact,
or whatever those things are. Oh, replace those support garments
entirely with something made of it! Really irritate those, uh,
bludgeons, and get them into a fight with each other.”

“That will cause
another riot, I hope you know,” said Esther as she came out with a
hazed-with-red sack of knitting needles. “Sarah really needs to
get Maria her knitting supplies, though why she is doing so is beyond
me.”

“Perhaps she
frets?” I asked.

“I'll say that
again.” said Anna. “I now wonder if that's why I worked
at it so much.”

“In your case,
that was an activity your mother 'approved' of, as well as something
every woman you know of does, and you dare not do something
you like or can do well in lieu of it, even if knitting is something
you have little time for and drives you into a state of fury more
often than not.” Pause, then, “I suspect your knitting needles,
yarn, and much else are actually witch-grade rubbish foisted
on you, as it seems you need to be someone like Sarah to know what
the good stuff looks like and where to get it.”

“You may say
that thrice over,” said Sarah. “Good yarn is very hard to
find up here, and if you want to be certain to have good needles, let
him make them to suit.”

“You wish some
knitting needles?” I asked.

“I may,
especially with your stockings,” said Sarah. “I'd like some made
of that one metal that does not tend to rust, in fact, as the brass
ones need regular rubbing with rouge.”

“That is the
trouble with the brass ones,” said Esther. “I suspect there are
answers to that.”

“Tinning is the
short-term solution,” I said. “I could wipe-tin them, but the
best material for those is to use, uh, these sculpted wooden handles
of laminated blackwood and that other lighter-colored wood, then put
blackened tool-steel points on them, with the metal portions done to
a high-polish before blackening.”

“What would that
do?” asked Sarah.

“Make ones that
work extremely well,” said the soft voice. “Done to
Anna's measurements, they would permit her to actually knit
passably as to outcome and speed, given decent part-synthetic yarns.”

“Not hardly wear
them out, either,” I said. “The shaft goes down the middle, all
the way down it, and it's got this ground finish there, but the part
that shows outside of the wood needs to be gently tapered according
to this special formula, highly polished, and then the whole thing
blackened – and then it will just need occasional wiping with
drying oil diluted with boiled distillate to 'stay' good.”

“Improve them
over time, actually,” said the soft voice. “If you use such hard
woods, especially bonded using glues from across the sea, then wipe
those sticks well with drying oil and use some of their fine
scrubbing pads between each instance, then you'll have something akin
to some of your tool handles – and each such further
application will just improve them as to shine and 'feel'.”

“Shine?”
asked Anna as she came out with a smoking bucket and tossed its
contents out into the hall. She shut the door quickly, muttering
about bad fireworks all the while.

“They'll
become quite nice-looking, as would the right type of blackwood,” I
said. “I suspect Sarah will wish some of blackwood, carved to fit
her hands precisely, and that in small, medium, and large as to
thread-running.”

“Yes,
I know,” said Sarah. “I would like those, that and some decent
yarn bought in the fourth kingdom, though if you do those, I would
watch out.”

“Why?”
I asked. Sarah's speech sounded distinctly ominous.

“As
every woman I know who does any real amount of knitting will wish the
full set,” said Sarah. “In my case, I would wish them simply
because regardless, I will no doubt be doing a lot of knitting
in the months to come, if only for our stockings.”

“You
wear them out also?” I said.

“Wearing
trekking boots tends to do that, it seems,” said Sarah. “One
wants stockings with thick soles to stand those, though I think
weight has a say in the matter, also. Mine might endure a few weeks,
as I just noticed how my feet were starting to hurt some.”

“Too
much time on your feet,” I said. “You'll be able to rest your
legs shortly.”

We
were done with the 'clearance' shortly thereafter, and when I needed
to go fetch that one huge collection of documents we had secreted in
that one room, I had Sarah for a companion. We were both armed and
ready for trouble, though I suspected the rats in the area were going
to be inclined for corn-meal and not us, not with their accursed
leaders no longer in the area, and while I heard rats, and
smelled rats, these creatures stayed away from us.

They
were not staying clear of some cleaners in the area, as I
heard someone yell, then the thud of a club of some kind.

“I
think they are turning more of those rat-clubs, and now cooking their
glued ones,” said Sarah. “I heard talk in the kitchen that it is
thought wise to take a club in one hand, and one's cleaning bucket in
the other, as places are finally getting cleaned in here that have
not seen cleaners inside them in a dog's age.”

“The
rats have made nests in them, ofttimes,” I said, drawing my
suppressed pistol and drilling a large example in the head. The rat
screeched and flipped away. “That one was not expecting me to pot
it.”

“That
one did not sound like a white one, thankfully,” said Sarah,
“though it did sound a bit on the large size, so it might well have
been brought up here.”

“Mostly
the secret way, then unloading them in their cages on the upper
levels,” said the soft voice. “While the witches haven't been
above the third floor of the house in thirty years or so, they did
make somewhat frequent trips up to the third – and more than one
such room was their 'rat-room'.”

“Which
we need to clean out,” I said. “Say hello to my shotgun,
Señor Rat. He not like you very much.”

“What?”
asked Sarah. “Where did you hear that?”

“The
original was on a poster I once saw,” I said. “It showed this
one really awful-looking thug saying something about 'say hello to my
little friend', and it was a scene from this one movie, er, visual
story, that I never had the chance to see.” Pause, then, “that
second-hand store was about worthless, so I went inside it but once
and never bothered going inside it again.”

“Speaking
of rats that way?” asked Sarah. “Annistæ would not
speak of them that way, as the word for rat is not one they assign
gender to.”

“Even
their pet rats?” I asked.

“You
were not speaking of a rat as being a pet,” said Sarah. “If you
were speaking of it as being a person, the word is 'Ćèro' if
it was male, and 'Ćèra' if it was female.”

“Chair-ah?”
I asked.

“That
would be appropriate to a rat were it inclined to become a mother and
not an actual mother one,” said Sarah. “They have a special word
for mother, and that word is 'Doña' – and you speak of
mothers there with respect, especially if it is the wife of a
settlement's leader, same as you do of such a man.”

“El
Jefe?” I asked.

“That
would be the proper way to speak of such a person, though that person
is usually more the leader of a large settlement, or more
properly, one of their towns,” said Sarah. “The more usual word
is 'Don', though that word might better be spelled Dón, as
that 'O' sound is a bit lengthened, at least among some of the people
I've heard speak.”

“Or
the word is pronounced 'strong' when such a person has learned to
suck on weed-bundles and powder his nose,” I said, as we returned
with that one stout leather satchel.

The
change wrought in the place during our absence was remarkable: two
new-looking folding tables, these being small 'rimmed' examples of
laminated light and dark woods, one table having beer and the other
bread, the bread piled high, sliced, on two waxed wooden platters,
one bread-pile toasted, the other not so, with jam pots and
tubs of cheese-spread much in evidence. I wondered if I was going to
need to share a jam pot with Deborah, at least until I was
handed my own 'tin' half-filled with jam and a slice of toasted
bread.

“I
know what I shall do, if we have the chance on the trip,” said
Sarah. “Toast bread.”

“Perhaps
I can manage that without smoke-signals,” I said.

“I
hope not!” said Sarah in horror. “You do not plan on setting the
boat alight, do you?”

“I
suspect he was speaking of the bread,” said Esther gently. “Now
this bread looks good. You grinding your own grain, like I told you
months ago, and getting it in the whole stuff?”

“No,
but I did change the supplier of such grain to a mill in Ploetzee,”
said Hendrik. “That one grinder we have here has its crank turned
for beer much of a day every day, as every day is a beer-making day
if there are more than four cooks in the house.”

“Perhaps
make a small run of porridge-grain with it,” I said. “We may
wish some...”

“Yes,
if you could get some grain in that thing edgewise, given how much
Kuchen they are baking,” said Anna. “They are making a lot
of those things, and someone told me about this special type of
long-cooked jam that uses honey in it instead of the usual
long-boiled sugar-tree sap, so I told them about doing up 'three full
pots'. They should have that done shortly.”

“Jam-pot?”
I asked. “You'll wish one large enough for the house proper?”

“No,
not that large,” said Anna. “If it's the size of a larger beer
mug, then it should work, though if Sarah's cousin is over
much, then we may well wish a house-size one. I've never seen a girl
so taken with cherry jam.”

“Her
teeth wish it,” said Annistæ, “though I like that kind you
spoke of enough to want to have it stewing up in our rooms on a small
lamp filled with Alkoli.”

“With
honey?” asked Georg, as he developed his own interest in beer and
bread. “I can usually eat these without griping, though if the
bread isn't fresh, it's been known to cause some trouble.”

“Stuff
had white-thread starting,” as I took over another table and
laid out that smelly tome. “Almost wish an old wooden knitting
needle for turning this thing, as it feels as if it has had
lard-slimed hands caressing it for nigh on three hundred years.”

“More
than that, if you speak of the earlier missives,” said the soft
voice. “Much of what pertains to today is in the last finger's
width, that being what they planned to do to Georg.”

I
was given an old wooden rug-hook, this thing made of a whitish wood
and extremely hard, and Annistæ told me she wished it back, as
she had found enough rags to start a 'sitting rug'. I asked her as I
looked if this meant one sat on the rug, or if one put one's
bench or stool upon the rug and it kept one's feet off of a cold
stone floor.

“The
latter usually,” she said. “There are a lot of clothes that feel
like they have these nasty bugs that Cabroni like in their clothing,
but they have no such things, so I have set them aside for making
paper, but there are clothes that are not fit for wear or repairing
other clothes that I was told were fit for rags, and those I could
use for such a rug, so I have been bagging those up when I wished to
have a break from sorting out what is upstairs.”

“Probably
make one of these out of that 'brass' for practice,” I said.
“Perhaps two or three, as that way you have spares, and then they
work well for a lot of things. Oh, right here. Here it
says...”

“Yes,
what does it say?” asked Hans. “Is that one about that witch
Hieronymus?”

“It
is,” I said ominously. “It seems that he was to keep watch for
someone who was spoken of in this one book... Oh, no. They
were sent to watch for some creature that would be as destructive as
Sieve, and he was trained at length to identify it – and if it did
not show during his tenure, then he was to train those others...”
I paused, then said, “others?”

“I
was told he dumped a lot of curses,” said Georg. “Those people
that came might have been from the second kingdom, and they got their
instructions from there, but they knew about those who've been
causing trouble, and those stinkers were from the fifth kingdom.”
Pause, then, “is that why you went after Blomfels so much?”

“Not
sure,” I said. “I'm not sure just why I do some of that stuff.
Only part I know less about is how it happens – and there,
beyond someone we both are familiar with is involved, is very much
of a mystery to me.” Pause, then, “here we go. This
details what they first planned to do, and this stuff is really
detailed – oh, that, and there were a lot of higher-up witches
arguing about the whole mess, complete with fightings and poisonings
and assassins doing their nonsense all among those people –
and that's just for the earlier stages. They really were spying on
you good, and me, almost as much, at least as if I go by this
document here.”

“At
least their spies were telling them a lot, which too often was
guesswork on their part as they could not learn much about
you,” said the soft voice. “Keep telling Georg just what
they were planning on doing with and to him.”

“Not
just an ordinary double-barreled inquest,” I said. “They were
intending some real threats, including the presentation of one
or more severed heads of your relatives...”

“They
didn't manage that,” said Georg, “even if they did kill
enough of them and enslaved a fair number more.”

“He
told me about what they tried to do, and just how many people in his
family have been killed recently, and that just to get onto him,”
said Hendrik. “Now he spoke of money. Anything in there about how
much?”

“Precise
amounts?” I asked. “This is more by inference, as this was
apparently done over a long drunken session at a five course full
witch-meal, where there was more high-test consumed than all else, so
they barely knew what they were saying, much less doing, by the time
it was over, but the amount was altogether sizable – five bags
full, all full-minted gold in witch-money, and each bag to weigh ten
on our scale....” Pause, then, “ten on our scale? What were
they using, a special witch-scale?”

“Yes,
and you've seen those in the fifth kingdom,” said the soft voice,
“complete with some of the more-usual tricks done to them.”

“Play
with the weights, and they go exclusively by weight if one speaks of
witch-coins,” I murmured. “Witch-money?” I gasped. “That is
a lot of money, given that we were told it took that whole box
full of commonplace money to get one suite of Gabriel's stinky
clothing...”

I
looked at Georg in horror, and he gulped audibly. Witches that high
up arguing about who did what and how much to do to a commonplace man
was enough to scare anyone colors. I then had some other answers to
the matter of Georg. “It involved a double-barreled inquest, only
the other hand held a large and sharp knife and not a sack of
full-minted witch-coins...” I had a question.

“I
can give something of an answer to what those are,” said Sarah.
“They spoke of coins that no longer properly exist, as those coins
you speak of were the coins of the witches of long ago.”

“There
are witch-coins, and there are real witch-coins, which we
earlier learned of,” I murmured. “Full-minted must mean the
current version of those things, ones which they tried to copy as
well as they could...” Pause, then, “that meant dealing with but
a few 'groups' or families, Gabriel's being the best known.”

“Got
it in one, and they made a good deal of money on those transactions,
especially as that much witch-money involved lengthy periods
of 'buying' their services,” said the soft voice. “Also,
Gabriel's family had examples of prewar witch-coins, and their
boughten jewelers, at least those of them who were strong enough
witches, did the final processing to produce what was deemed to be
'the only true witch-coins currently minted' – which has meant a
steady and sizable income since the time of Cardosso, as most of
those old witch-coins were melted down during the time of Charles.”

“Hence
now, the real money is in the holding of witches,” I said, “and
until those people were killed off, more and more of it was getting
converted daily into 'real' witch-money.”

I
then noticed that I had advanced into a realm that bore no true
resemblance to Georg's current plight, but took on the larger
picture. This was the debasing of 'commonplace' money by its steady
and stealthy recasting, with more and more being done in various
witch-enclaves, fewer and fewer jewelers elsewhere having time due to
the education of the populace into a pack of full-owned
witch-slaves....

“That
process started hundreds of years ago,” I said, “the person who
dictated this writing knew that much, if not much more, even if he
did know that it's done fairly well today, well enough that any witch
can more or less do whatever he wants when he's of a mind to do it in
the bulk of the first kingdom if he exercises a certain level of
discretion.” Pause, then, “that's during the daytime. At night,
the witches had no such restrictions.”

“Had?”
asked Georg. “No one goes out at night, unless it's a witch.
That's what a lot of people believe.”

“So
they still believe that prime bit of rubbish up here,” I
said. “I might be able to go out at night and not worry too much
as long as I stay well clear of most towns, but the majority of
people just stay inside asleep as if dead, due to some very old
curses that still...”

“Are
you reading from that document's words, or from what it is truly
saying?” asked Hendrik.

“Not
sure right now,” I said. “Oh, here. It speaks of swords. Oh,
nothing but the truth. They think that 'whoever makes those things
in Roos' must be a witch of the old line, as they shine like mirrors,
have the right shape and act 'as per ye tenets of ye black booke'.”
Pause, then, “what?”

“Especially
treacherous to use,” said the soft voice. “Continue reading.
That's just one instance of why Georg has had so much attention put
to him recently, even if they've been after him for a long
while.”

“Here
it describes the precise nature of that double-barreled inquest...”
Pause, then, “it was about swords?”

“Yes,
and that before you came, as it seems he knew something of
what it took to make good ones,” said the soft voice. “His tools
had a tendency to work, as he had to figure out a lot
of such matters on his own because he was deemed not fit to
become a witch during his apprenticeship; hence he took in other
'outcast' smiths when and if they showed, and those people tended to
band together. Together, those people made both a lot of tools, and
more, tools that were nearly 'potato country quality' for working –
least until they shelled his out-of-the-way shop into ruin and he had
to head north.”

“They
did not like that place much,” said Georg. “At least I had
enough money hid in various places that I could hide for a season and
then come north on foot, as if I were marked. I was treated like
such a person by the witches then, and it seems I still am.”

“And
now, here it describes the orders that were cut to your most recent
hit-team, other than the one you endured earlier today, that is,” I
said. “Oh, they even called it a double-barreled inquest –
one with the doubled-eight bore fowling piece stuffed with mingled
'silver' shot and twenty-line stuff, which is what normally goes into
those smaller pistols...”

That
made for muttering, until I read an 'addendum': “such pieces are to
be procured 'new' and then gone through from muzzle to butt-plate, as
'silver shot devours barrels', and this gun” – here, I pronounced
it as written, that being 'gonne' – “must have tight bores, fully
choked, and regulated to ten units...” I then spat, “they have
this figure, only it's a special one. Probably a tangled-up
rune-string that's a curse of some kind, one of those things a lot
call 'secret markings'.”

“No,
that's a tangled-up rune-string used by witches when they wish to
write of that unit that is commonly referred to by 'commons' as
'paces',” said the soft voice, “only now, people need to
realize that unit is really a witch-minted unit of measure and use
gunner's talk instead.”

“Decent
gunners, anyway, those who hit their pigs at least some of the time,”
said Sarah. “They usually used the figure 'yards', in
calculations, though some old tapestries spoke of meters, and they
use that term in the Valley.”

“It's
a bit longer, perhaps the width of three or four fingers, depending
on the size of your hand. Mine, perhaps a bit more than three,” I
said. “The precise term is 'three dot three-nine' inches, if you
want to be exact – and people are going to need to be exact
with such terminology if we...” Pause, then, “simple. Give
units first in yards, as in 'Y-units', then in meters as 'M-units'.
That way our gunners know their stuff regardless of what they learned
with, and we give out gun-protractors and things like them that are
double-sided, so that one side does meters and the other yards.”

“Very
good,” said the soft voice. “Those mechanical figuring devices
like Sarah has lend themselves to such calculations, as hers
has two scales on it that permit easy figuring between the two and it
only develops real inaccuracy when at the limits of its range
to each end.”

I
then resumed detailing the plans regarding Georg, and here, it got
ugly: they had waited for him as he did his rounds, then rushed him
in a small mob from both sides, with one of the most-hardened – a
trained killer imported specially from the second kingdom house –
holding his knife to his throat, and another such thug training his
new – as in just bought and well-proofed – weapon upon
Georg from the other side and a bit to the front, with 'full loads
and stiff witch-grade powder'. They then put a message in his hands,
one he dreaded seeing, as he had been fearing such a summons for a
very long time. They then rifled his buggy, and finding none of what
they were looking for, 'vanished' as if by smoke.

“Obviously
well-drilled and well-practiced thugs,” I murmured. “I wonder of
any of those people are still alive?”

“Yes,
some, but getting together that quality of thugs in that
number is nowhere near as easy as it was then,” said the soft
voice. “It still can be done, but those looking are going
to have to pay a lot of money for their services, they're
going to have to hire them away from people who want them handy that
already pay them a lot of money, and then they're going to have to
ride herd over such a pack of thugs with some force – as in 'there
aren't that many loose well-qualified brigands handy
any more'.”

“It
sounds as if your labors recently have thinned them out greatly,”
said Sarah. “I would still be careful, Georg.” She then nodded
to me to continue with my 'translation'.

“That
message dealt with swords, and what they demanded of him,” I said
flatly to Hendrik. “It was 'any good ones you give to us at the
prices we deem, and for each one of those, we shall give you two of
our choosing, one which you may sell to witches, and the other which
you are to deliver to your buyers in the place of those you give us.”

“I
did no such thing,” said Georg.

“I
know, as I have good information as to who makes those where you have
your business, and more, how much care you exercise in keeping them
safe,” said Hendrik. “He doesn't have time to make many, and the
way he does it – it seems mostly a mystery to you, but it is no
mystery to me, based on what I have been able to learn.”

“Uh,
you know why they're done that way?”

“Something
about 'they have to be that way because they're intended for real
use, and not merely to look at mostly,” said Hendrik. “Now the
king of the fourth kingdom should arrive here shortly, as he had a
hard ride of it getting here and he's barely had any chance to eat –
and he needs to eat proper food, as a great deal gripes him.”

“Uh,
why?” I asked.

“He's
survived two assassination attempts, and that second one, it was a
near thing for him,” said Hendrik. “He was stabbed multiple
times in the gut, and he's quite limited as to how fast he can eat,
but also what he can eat, and the only person who stinks up privies
worse than he does is you.”

I
then returned to 'the writ-down plan B', this done as per ye tenets
of 'ye black booke': “if the subject proves obdurate, then he must
be burgled with great regularity, so that all may be known of
what he does and who he is with, with planted fetishes many and
strong, and those who surround him be true-witches in truth and in
deed, so as to make him one in thought if not in full nature'.” I
then spat, and gasped, “great regularity?”

“They
did try, but pulling it off was a bit much while I was at home,”
said Georg. “About the only time they could have done so was when
I was either in a place like this, where every witch with a bag of
bones has pass-keys to every door, or when I was sleeping out of
town, which was not often. I killed more than one witch who
tried where I lived at night, as I slept with my club in my bed, and
strings tied to my door as well as my safe-box, and had I known about
traps that would have gotten witches without blowing my house to bits
and setting it alight, I would have set those also in front of
both doors.”

“The
large rock over your door?” I asked. “The one held up by a
stick?”

“It
has collected blood more than once,” said Georg. “I doubt that
the witch in question managed to go far afterward, as I found where a
coach had been parked in my yard that morning, and there was blood on
the yard from my doorway to where that coach had been parked.”

“My,
you do tend to be thorough,” I murmured.

“That's
about the rule for cannon-masters that are decent,” said Esther.
“Now this here speaks of what they are after, that being 'swords
like those done long ago'.” Esther looked at Georg, and said, “did
they think that you had done those?”

“I
never did, but it seems they thought that of his,” said
Georg. “I did, at least in my old shop, make a few decent
corn-knives, but those were more due to the three or four of us
testing and learning and making a lot of scrap until we got ones that
worked – and we'd test those a lot before we turned loose of them,
so what we did was regarded as 'very good' in that place.”

“Very
good?” I asked.

“Any
blade you make makes our best ones look to be scrap-metal, only fit
to be tossed in Frankij,” spat Georg. “Now Hendrik here has
shown me some plans, and while you are gone, he wants those other two
men put here so they cannot contact any witches, so...”

“Best
fetch them in a hurry, then,” I said. “They might be somewhat
laggardly about starting, but they know where the money is for
hunting right now, and once they get going, then there will be
no stopping them from getting to 'those prime fields'.”

“Resume,
please,” said Hendrik. “He needs to hear what I think comes
next.”

I
did so, and here, I learned just what had been planned: during my
absence on the trip – it was known of well in advance of our
leaving, this by postal interception – the shop was to be more or
less taken over by witches, and there, they were to beat out as many
fetish-grade blades as they could, using 'ye lair of ye monster' to
birth them. More, upon learning just what Georg was making, they
were to dismantle his planned equipment and put up their
fetish-wrought equivalent in its place, with the goal of turning it
'from a great haven of witches into a yet-greater one, one worthy of
Cardosso, as that witch that runs the place is the greatest seen
since him, if not yet stronger, for his blades have killed thousands,
and only...'

Here,
matters became indecipherable, and only rubbing had me learn just who
was referred to. I spat the 'common' name of that witch, as speaking
his rune-writ name was very unwise.

“They
compared me to Mangle,” I spat. “Him and his blades seem
to be especially well-known.”

“No,
go further,” said the soft voice. “That is what they know.
Read next what they could not prove.”

That
took more rubbing, as here, the messed up letters then spoke of
people like Blaine, Imhotep, Bertha, Morris-son,
The Mistress of the North, and then including some names writ in
letters so strange-looking that it took me some seconds to learn that
they were mangled runes.

“These
others could only be writ in runes,” I spat. “What were they?”

“Possible
names for that witch of the fifth title,” said the soft voice, “and
like all other pre-drowning witches, that meant a witch of power
eclipsing all they had ever known. Now read a bit more. Here, it
comes to the meat of the matter, which is who they really
think you are.”

I
then read aloud, “this new man may well be Sieve itself, with just
enough meat to him to fool the uninitiated, for he kills all that he
sees and will deed the planet to Brimstone in its entirety should we
not placate him.”

“What?”
I screeched. Here, my voice made the place ring like a bell, and
more than one book on the bookcases crashed to the floor to then
vanish into gouts of dust. “What happened there?”

“Fetish-grade
binders that were slipped to Hendrik's predecessors without their
knowledge,” said the soft voice. “The other fetishes in the room
hid them well, but there was nothing in them worth reading anyway, as
it was all written as if the writer was far gone in Geneva –
witch-grade Geneva, that is.”

“Witch-grade
Geneva?” I asked.

“Is
made much like Komaet, and is nearly pure aquavit for strength,”
said the soft voice. “It takes a very strong witch to
consume it, which is why the last regular consumer of it was
Cardosso himself.”

I
then read that most of the scrap metal was indeed made by witches:
they had labored in their vast and foul-reeking swarms, doing all
they could to both make 'swords fit for a multitudinous army', as
well as duplicate Frankie from the yet-incomplete drawings, while
Georg's work was defaced.

What
little of it he had managed, as he knew he was in over his head from
the very beginning, unlike these drink-sodden fools, who took much of
a week to learn this type of furnace was beyond them also.

It
was not a fifth kingdom smelter, one of those huge squat
things that used size, mass, and masses of 'educated well-broken
slaves' to build and rebuild after each run. This thing was in
another class altogether for sophistication, and their copies of what
drawings Georg had – crude, near-indecipherable, according to the
account – were here reproduced.

The
results were so outlandish that I gasped. “This thing looks like a
volcano, and likely indeed to erupt when it first runs,” I said.
“Now were they going to bring up one of those fifth kingdom
horrors?”

“They
were, had they been able to erect that thing,” said the soft voice.
“Your return prevented that from happening, as it takes time
to get those done fit for fetishes, and capturing a suitable number
of slaves takes time also, and you were supposed to be gone several
months, not a few weeks.”

“And
when they burgled Georg's house?” I asked.

“They
did not realize just what they had until they undid the strings he
had tying those rags in place,” said the soft voice. “They did
pass those off before they were killed, and both are long south and
nearing the hands of the Powers scheduled to receive them.”

“And
here, it says what got them interested in Georg,” I said. “Fit
to go to the west school, but his family too poor by half, and not
fit to go anywhere else because of a lot else, and then he's a
good cannon-master, and tends to cause more trouble for
domestic witches than anyone else, and he's a holy terror when
it comes to coaches.” I looked at Georg, and “five coaches?”

“Yes,
with my best gun,” said Georg. “I put a distance-shell in each
one of those things, and each time I did so, that line of coaches
went up like a string of powder-mills like down in the fifth
kingdom.”

“Five
lines and five shells?” I gasped.

“Sounds
like Willem could take lessons from him,” said Esther. “You
weigh your charges?”

“No,
because I had no fit means of weighing them, save this old balance I
had, so I loaded my charges ahead of time, bagged my powder in used
diapers, and then, I tried when I could to get this especially hot
powder from this one man,” said Georg. “Usually, it was quite
scarce, so when I had to, I put it at the red-string tied end of the
bag, and the rest of the powder, that with the black string, had
common powder, though I screened that stuff and kept the fines for
loading shells.” Pause, then, “those shells, I loaded myself, so
as to make sure the end of the charge with the red string went in
first.”

“Hence
the effects of using a hotter powder...” I gasped. “Duplex loads
for your guns? What did that do?”

“Give
two hundred yards more range on swine, if I had it,” said Georg,
“and twice that more for distance-shells, even if it meant
replacing gun tubes about twice as often as a rule.” Pause, then,
“sometimes, though, I got a good one, and that one had a true bore
and stayed tight a lot longer.”

“How
could you tell?” I asked.

“I
had a marsh-made instrument,” said Georg, “or so I was told. I
think Willem or someone else who fires guns got it, at least I hope
so, as it went missing during the time I was hurt after that last pig
climbed onto my gun.”

I
turned to Hendrik, then said, flatly, “now you know why they're so
interested in him, why he goes out of his mind around witches
as well as swine, and now why every witch worth his bones thinks him
marked.” I glanced down, then spat, “they bought his
brother the wheelwright just to cause him trouble, they killed
his relatives just to get to him, he tried to make that
furnace right in spite of his ignorance... No wonder that
place needs a watchtower.”

“So
these plans indicate,” said Hendrik. “They might be a long way
from complete, but there is enough here to draft a proclamation.”

“This
whole mess predates my arrival, sir,” I said.

“Your
arrival just raised the stakes quite a bit,” said the soft voice.
“They don't just want you – they want him, and have wanted him
for quite some time.”

I
had to drink beer after this whole mess, as it was indeed a thirsty
matter, as well as a bit shocking, and after using the rug-knitting
tool to turn a handful more pages, these dealing with the various and
sundry goings on of witchdom in a surprisingly detailed fashion, I
found more 'dirt'. I then noted that I had everyone who could write
legibly doing so, with Esther dictating to Georg.

“Now,
go a bit further,” said the soft voice. “You'll find more 'dirt'
on their plans regarding where you live – and by extension, just
what they've been working on for so long here.”

As
I was speaking of the implications of the overall scheme for the
first kingdom, this by implication of just what they were doing where
we lived and where I worked – “his subordinated people must be
ours, and ours alone” – and then, what Hieronymus actually did...

“He
was surrounded by nothing but witches and witch-slaves,” I spat.
“They do that everywhere, so that's all people learn, that's all
they think, no wonder they see the life of a coach-riding smelly thug
that drinks high-test and does nothing of worth or value so cursedly
attractive!”

“Now
what is he doing with that book?” asked a soft voice. I then
turned up to see the king of the fourth kingdom by Hendrik, who was
taking notes like made. I could not recall his name, for some
reason.

“Giving
me a lot of information about witches, what they have been
doing here, why they have so gone after our people, and by example,
what they are doing to us all, and that's for the ones here. The
ones from Norden – we can only assume they mean to do something
similar, only there are a vastly greater number, and they have less
use for us than the ones here.”

I
paid them little more mind, for I had found something even 'nastier':
“now, there is this new witch, one who is not ours, and who may
be...” The rest of that line petered off, until later, on the next
missive, this speaking of the third ditch and the horrors found
there.

“That
is no witch, but a marked person” – here, I pronounced marked as
'mark-ED', which was the witch-version – “and no common one...”

Flip,
the next missive, then, “on the subject of this new marked person
in Roos, this between two Powers, writ on the ninth instant, this day
of Cardosso 863,14...” I paused in my 'translation', and said,
“the witches reckon days and years differently than we do.
Cardosso wasn't that long ago.”

“I
think they reckon time from when the curse struck,” said the king
from the fourth kingdom, “and what you said just confirmed it. Go
on, even if I know that witch had nothing to do with the
Curse.”

“Save
attributed its coming to himself,” I spat, before resuming
'translation'. “'We know what that thing is', this said over
drinks in the upper room of Funkelmann's in the third kingdom port.”
Pause, then, “they're very careful when and where they speak of
matters germane to their cause, which is one of the chief reasons we
know so little about them, even if they record everything in
exhaustive detail.”

“It
is good they do so, however, as now we are or will be aware of all
they have done, more or less,” said the king of the fourth kingdom.
“How far back does all of that go?”

“Several
hundred years, but most of it he's already told me,” said Hendrik.
“He'll need to go over that book more and then go over what is
written, and write the final report, then read it back to us for
writing – unless he can get one of these special devices...”

“He
was told he would have one,” said Sarah, “and I suspect we will
receive a number of them. If that is the case, then it is likely our
issues with printing, within a fairly short time, will no longer be
an issue.”

“If
you mean 'large quantity' printing, then we'll still need to do it
using that screw press for a while,” I said. “If you mean 'one,
two, or ten', then that capacity we'll have quickly.” Pause, then,
“those large-quantity printers are heavy brutes, and they need to
get a lot of paper to print that stuff in numbers.”

Pause,
then, “where, exactly, is this place called Funkelmann's?”

“That
would be in the port of the third kingdom, and it is the largest
drink-house there, though the one seaward is but somewhat smaller,
and the same for the one to the east. I can name those places also,
and I suspect many of the witches where I govern go there when they
wish to learn important information.”

“It
seems they come from all over to that location to give and learn
secrets,” I spluttered. “Nothing like it outside of a handful of
locations scattered here and there, many witches can take ship to
that location with few being the wiser, the 'commonplace' witches can
get trashed in those places... They're almost as big as largePublic Houses... No, they're
like Roadhouses, services and all!”

“Very good,” said the soft voice.
“Now you know why they're known throughout witchdom, and why the
upper rooms of all three places were where much of what you are
reading was recorded, save when it was writ at the homes of Powers
themselves in private.”

“Secure, also,” I said. “Those
places all sound fit for round mines blasting in their doorsteps, and
that place named Funkelmann's – it needs a brick of military
cooking fuel tied to the front, and put against their doorstep.”

“What would that do?” asked Hendrik.

“Funkelmann's would be destroyed,”
said Sarah. Here, she turned to me. “Goortmann's is nearest the
sea, that one I just spoke of is near the center of the Long Wharf,
and then near the east end of that wharf there is Snoggwaart's.”
Pause, then, “every one of those places is as large as what you
named, save they are not commonplace roadhouses for size,
construction, age, nor much else, as their noise never stops and they
are usually so full of drunken thugs that one thinks them each fit
for a thousand pirates, and that's for Goortmann's and Snoggwaart's.
That center one is the largest, oldest, and worst of them all.”

“Can you describe this building?”
asked Hendrik. “I may have seen it briefly.

“I have, though mostly late at night,
when that place is relatively quiet,” said Sarah. “All of those
places are as wide as a very large Public House, they all have tall
overhanging second stories with many shuttered windows, and then each
has a tall peaked tiled roof, which has an attic with many more rooms
in it, so they are three stories above ground. Below ground, I have
but rumors, but those rumors are fairly consistent.”

“Yes, and what are those?” asked
Hans.

“More than one level to their
basements, and it is likely there is communication from those
basements among themselves and to other locations by mining-cart
tracks,” said Sarah. “They all do a great deal of underground
business in that port, and that I can speak of reliably, as I have
talked with many on the Short Wharf in that place, and some on the
Long Wharf, and then, there was what I heard from Pieter and his
crew when I took ship with him for a trip of two and a half weeks.”

“That is no mean voyage,” said the
king of the fourth kingdom. “Now this man here – I have heard of
him. What were those witches speaking of him?”

Only then did I recall this particular
king's name: Rolf.

“Something like this: 'we will learn
all you say, and follow you everywhere, and compel your every action,
such that we shall own you as a slave, fool',” I said. “Those
were the instructions given to those who were to attack him. What he
received in that one missive, unless he has it still, is something of
a mystery so far, but I suspect it has to do with the swords I
make. I do know he was compelled at gunpoint more than once,
he's had witches come after him a host of times, and there's more to
this than that – oh, and they think I'm an especially bad
arch-witch, one so bad that I'd need runes to describe my cult-name,
presuming I actually had one.” Pause, then, “are what you
were 'given' in lieu of those swords the burglars took present?”

“Yes, and they are fit for Frankij,”
said Georg. “Worse blades I have never seen, and rusty things in
the bargain.”

“And I wonder just what they managed
where we worked?” I asked softly, as I moved toward Georg's
'strongbox', this being on the floor. “Probably didn't do much
better, more than one died in there, and then they used slaves to
quench them...”

“Hence the rust,” said the soft
voice. “They still got a lot of money for those
coarse-ground rusty blades, and that strictly because of where they
were forged. They did the other work on those later, and each of
those soft slaggy things is now hanging on a wall somewhere as a
prized and costly fetish.”

“And what I actually made is now out
causing trouble,” I murmured. “Well, I hope they slice up their
owners well when they handle them badly while trashed. Perhaps bite
each hand that holds them until they finally get back to those they
were made for.” Here, I turned to the two kings, then Georg.
“Karl, and Sepp, right. You get waxes of each man's dominant
hand?”

“I had no idea that was what you did,”
said Georg. “I know they both have hands that are a bit like
mine.”

“Best send such people to Anna or I,”
said Sarah. “I would be glad to ask them precisely what is wished,
and between the two of us, we should find out if they wish swords for
work, or for fetishes, as some people who ask you want the latter.”

“Yes, and I tell them to sup with
Brimstone, and that with my club in my hand,” said Georg. “Now,
I shall air out their smelly hides with this gun that thinks itself a
doubled roer for kick and execution.”

“It does?” I asked.

“At ten paces, or perhaps less, if you
hit a witch solid with that thing, he does not get back up, at
least he does not do so quickly,” said Georg, “and it thinks
itself a doubled roer for kicking, as I came here very sore and
wanted Geneva for rubbing. The bruises I had were no joke.”

“And now to take a look at what they
left him,” I murmured, this upon finding a lock unlike any I had
seen anywhere. This thing looked not only especially well made, but
the iron-bound box was coated with what looked like a species of
peculiar varnish, one red-tinted, deep, and quite strong.

“This box?” I asked.

“Was not particularly cheap, and the
lock cost as much as the box, given both came from a firm in the
fourth kingdom,” said Georg. “That type of lock was described as
being impossible to pick, and...”

Deborah appeared as if by magic, took one
look at the lock, shook it, then said, this in a high-pitched voice,
“I have picked those, but each time, it was tricky, and it took me
a good ten minutes at the least.”

“Meaning it's a so-called hard-lock,”
I murmured. I took the lock in my hand, and the thing opened as if
it had never been locked, this with a resounding click.

“Sounds like you were sold, Georg,”
said Deborah.

“No, he was not,” said Sarah. “That
is one of those locks that would give you trouble, Deborah, as I have
seen those, and they are not only hard to pick, but hard to break,
and then, they are very hard to cut on. I've seen chisels ruined,
saws worn out, and a great deal more done to those.”

“First, they use decent steel in those,
stuff they cook up much like I do, and they put a fair amount
of blacking in their wrought iron, as well as small additions of
welding flux, and then they cast the parts, and finally finish
them to size in drop-dies, and use rivet-stock of the same material –
and they really beat on those things. Oh, oil-quench, deep cases,
file-hard exteriors, or nearly so, and then tougher than you might
believe.”

“That would be good enough for many
lecturers to think you had seen that place,” said the Rolf. “Now
what is this I hear about your doings?”

“This,” indicated Sarah, whipping out
her dagger. “Some of the latest batch. Across the sea, much of
what we will be doing will be in darkened realms, and therefore, one
does not wish a shiny knife, and this one has been tested at some
length and proved itself most deadly – as has his.” Here, she
pointed to me. “This stuff can cut chisels and bad slaggy rivets
with no damage to it whatsoever, and we shall have better yet within
a short time, as then we will have proper tools. We may even make
small lots here, come to think of it.”

“Small lots?” asked this man.

“Yes, for special tools,” said Sarah.
“This would be regarded as prime tool steel, even at the Heinrich
works, but what he has planned will beat their best by a mile.”

“Then that must be guarded, and guarded
closely...”

I had opened Georg's strong-box, and
laying there, two 'double-edged' horrors, these done so crudely I
wept. I touched one, and screamed.

“What?” asked Sarah, as she came to
the side. “I know you put so much time...” Pause, then to look
at me, then she asked, “they quenched those in blood.”

“Witch-blades,” I muttered through my
tears. “Accursed.” Then I screamed, and cried, “Accursed
blades, go and kill those who made you, at least the curses, only
each of you become a scythe, and cut down every witch you see as you
track those wretched beasts down, and then send all of them to hell,
and leave the metal behind!”

The
blades suddenly went to rusty bars of iron, this with a stunning blue
flash, and then, I noticed my hand had become hazed with blue. I
moved it along each blade, speaking as I did, “become fit for those
who made them, this of what I shall do upon my return, with the
proper size and shape for each man, the way I had made them, only fit
properly to each hand, and leave a small token behind, this in a
place where there will be no effect upon their usefulness, a token of
both those they are wedded to, and also who gave them these weapons
so as to destroy witches and their evil, and put the enemies of God
where they belong, which is with their master in hell!”

The flash this time was
huge, and sent us all reeling
back in stunned shock, then when I returned, I saw two blades, ones
identical to those I had made, though upon picking one up, I asked
for a rag, and began wiping down the blade. As I did, both of my
hands were hazed with blue, and when I saw the tin tag tied by string
to the pommel naming this sword as being for Sepp, I pictured his
hand in my mind, and prayed, this silently, that this one needed to
be especially for him, in fact 'wedded to him', much as if I had fit
the thing to his hands alone, and as I stroked the blade, the rag
became dirty.

The
blade also began to truly shine, and here, I knew the story:
even with the metal being right, there was still dirt and 'voids' in
it, and this portion was a requisite, that and the cold portion, and
as I did that, I softly asked for a folding table, as there was a
part that needed to happen that I did not understand.

“Much
of this I understand but little,” I said, “but with this metal,
even as it is now... Oh, my. This stuff isn't like what I made for
them. It's better, and not a little better – so why the dirt?”

“Because
it's not 'vacuum arc refined' steel made in a clean room,” said the
soft voice. “Notice how you've only dirtied up one rag to any real
degree?”

I
nodded mentally.

“That's
real crucible steel there, the stuff tough tools are made of,
and that material... You make Georg one of those strange corn knives
of that stuff, and he'll go through witches like he was a
butcher in a meat-shop.”

“Strange
corn-knives?” asked Georg, as I continued rubbing the sword. I
could feel it changing, this all over, with the guard and handle
doing odd things also. I could feel that portion lengthening a
fraction, such that the blade's balance was changing, and now, I knew
another matter that needed to be done personally – the fitting of
such a blade. They each had to be 'tied' to their user's reach,
strength, and even how they used such things.

In
my case, I had one uniquely tailored to me, I guessed, or I
had learned of its peculiarities, and I silently asked it to 'get the
right stuff in it' while I was working on Sepp's. I laid it down
upon the table, and the thing grew a thick coating of smoking frost
instantly.

“What
gives with that smoke?” gasped
the Rolf.

“That
causes them no small amount of help,” said Anna. “I am glad for
what he did for those, but the surgical knives – all of them –
they are now marked, at least those for my use, and all of them
smoked like that.” Pause, then, “they are marked for me,
actually, and I am not sure if he marked hers for her or not.”

“It
has a rose-bud at the tip,” said Sarah, “and it works very well
indeed.”

“That,
I think, will be the difference,” I said. “Women's swords will
receive rose-buds, men's – I'm not sure just yet, though if they
want something special, I can try to make one. Mine has no such
thing, just a simple cap I made of, uh, this weird alloy of silver
and bronze, but it was the first one, and then the thing somehow got
marked, which was not my doing, and when it's irritated or something,
that marking seems lit with fire.”

I
then asked the dumbest-sounding question I had asked since coming
here: “is this like those special blades burning blue when evil is
around?”

“No,
as your 'reach' is quite a bit further than anyone in that
story,” said the soft voice. “Recall how you could tell the
state of your immediate area, then that of the country in that one
election, even though you did not follow politics? Then you knew who
was going to get elected no less than six weeks prior to the
election, because you could feel the mood of an entire nation?” I
nodded. “That capacity has grown drastically, and hence if your
sword flames, there's something really unusual going on.”

“And
now for Karl's, which needs to be about an inch longer, because he's
taller, a slightly plumper grip than mine – mine is about the
shortest one I've made, as most are about an inch longer, and have a
different shape... I really need wax casts of people's hands, unless
I can get modeling clay for such matters, that or this special thing
that measures grips... Perhaps a 'dummy' sword that actually
measures what and how they do things?”

“That
will come later, as you will need to teach people how to use those,
and anyone who flies, they'll need to have one,” said the soft
voice. “Yes, it sounds antiquated – flying 'above the sky' and
having swords, even when you have weapons fit for 'old tales'
otherwise, but remember – swords do not run out of ammunition, they
don't need reloading, and they do work well in close quarters.”

“And
we will have close-quarter work where we go,” I said. “We are
going to be our own space-going soap opera.”

“What?”
squeaked Sarah. “What are you talking about?”

“Alien
soap operas, dear,” I said. “Don't have a clue where we will be
going, or what that thing or – no, things will be named, but we
will be producing our own 'alien soap operas' about how much fun
it is dealing with alien life forms – almost like, uh, 'Starship
Troopers', or some such rubbish.”

“They
have that one,” said the soft voice. “They have a lot of
those, including a whole long list of ones you've never heard of,
because those come from places closer than where you came from –
including a long list of some which may surprise you.”

I
had been rubbing Karl's sword this whole time, and the changes
wrought in that instrument of death were beyond comprehension. His
had acquired a slightly greater curve, as he was a 'slicer', while
Sepp could do both. In my case, I did whatever the situation
demanded, and hence mine was closer to 'does both reasonably well',
and I knew it could poke as well as slice.

It
had done that, and now, I was nearly done with Karl's. Sepp's was
still smoking, and I suspected that when we went for first training
Gabriel, and then our rat-hunt, they would prove decisive. I laid
Karl's down, then asked for Deborah.

“Your
knife, dear,” I said. “There is something...”

The
Rolf held up a third rusty rod, this one shorter. “They left this
behind.”

“First
your knife, then,” I asked. “It needs to become better, as
you're going to use it a lot. Then, there is something else
planned for you.”

“Yes?”
she asked.

“I
wondered what to call it, but the name so far for this piece will be
'the sting of the hornet',” I said. “It's kind of like this one
dagger I have with the label of evidence, but it's not quite as heavy
as that one is.”

“What
is it?” asked Deborah, as I began praying over her knife and felt
the thing 'go nuts' in my hand. It was now absolutely hazed with
bluish fire, and small lightning bolts came off of it. It seemed to
be changing before my eyes in some unfathomable way.

“That
comes next, after I get done redoing this one,” I said. “You
need one fully as good as what we're taking to take that place
overseas, then you need this other, as you're going to be among the
first to actually encounter witches in here, and they will try
for you, this in hallways too close to use a regular length sword,
but perfect for these.” Pause, then as I set her dagger down and
the thing instantly became covered with frost, then using rags, I
took up that one slaggy 'bar' of metal, closed my eyes, and
instantly, I was elsewhere.

I
was also 'holding' this new species of blade, that one called 'the
sting of the hornet'. While it was a good deal larger than a knife,
it was closer to a species of short sword, and its straight blade...

“Thing's
almost like a court sword, save shorter, a much stouter blade, still
as sharp as a razor, and the tip on this thing... Oh, good. It will
carry the usual temper line. That says a differential temper was
done, though it's a lot harder to do with a double-edged blade. They
almost need this special treatment.”

To
my surprise, I now saw this odd multi-strike die pound the
nasty-looking metal into its final form, then the metal utterly
changed into 'vacuum-arc-remelted' steel using specially purified
ingredients. More, this new steel had a surprisingly high content of
both cobalt and wolfram, such that it was true 'high-speed steel' –
yet it would be impossible to chip or break.

That
was quite important when one might need to spike through plate or
other matters, and 'the sting of the hornet' ignored anything short
of the very best swine-plate to come out of Norden.

The usual thin
sheet metal 'plates' sewn onto swine-hide vests worn by these
incoming thugs would not even slow a determined thrust by this thing
down. It would rip through them like that stuff was warm cheese
spread, in fact, and its slashes would be absolutely deadly.

“And now, the
second forging, this to final shape and size,” I murmured, as the
brilliant red-orange billet now went under these battering hammers
again. These essentially forged to completed size, and more, they
did so in an inert gas atmosphere, one with a modest amount of carbon
monoxide present for reducing properties.

This gas
combination also did some rather unusual things to the metal,
imparting an uncommon degree of hardness with no loss in toughness
whatsoever – and this was a very tough blade, just from its
construction alone.

Deborah would
become known indeed as 'The Mad Bee', and she would become feared by
the witches, as she would come up out of nowhere to kill them in
droves.

She
would also pick up a lot of markings in the process, smaller
ones, but these would but prepare her for 'the big time', that being
where one encountered all the varied and myriad things found in a
realm filled with Purple Haze.

That
gave me hope, and I worked more upon this blade, my hands dancing
over the keyboard when I was not moving them slowly over this odd
stationary domed surface. I soon found that nowhere near precise
enough, and I asked for the glitter ball.

That
device was of the highest precision, and its glittering faceted three
inch sphere rotated effortlessly. To use this device, as well as
this strange computer, reminded one constantly that there was indeed
a world filled with purple haze, and with the glitter ball under my
hand, and the keyboard under my left, I now forged out this fitting
weapon for a warrior of the shadows, one who became one with the
darkness, one who endured purple haze and came forth from that realm
aged beyond her years, bowed, unbroken...

And
smiling?

Yes, she was smiling, even if it was hard to
tell in a person who resembled an astronaut to an astonishing degree
– an astronaut of agility so astonishing that it seemed she could
leap twenty feet straight up like a cat, run like the wind, and
literally dodge bullets.

“See them coming, also,” I thought. “Can
she climb walls?”

“You already do so,” said the soft voice.
“Recall what you did banging heads earlier this morning, how you
had to do a 'berm shot' to make the turn at speed?”

I nodded, then put the finishing touches on
Deborah's blade. It had been an intense few minutes, but with this
equipment, that was all it took to make one of these. I then
had 'the sting of the hornet' in my hand, and with a few wipes, the
work was complete.

“Now, darken it, nice blue-black, mottled,
stripes, darken the silvered wire grip, nice little rose bloom on the
end to remind her of just who we all are fighting for, and then
cryogenesis. That is what forms the crystal structure and causes the
intermetallic boundaries to fully form in this metal.”

The blade, this nearly sixteen inches long,
slender of width and yet nearly a quarter of an inch thick along its
central spine, grew a coating of frost nearly three inches thick. I
set it down, slid it into another 'womb', and there, I 'grew the
metals' together, this being the 'genesis' portion. This turned the
blade into something not of this earth, and I wondered briefly if I
could do that with my sword.

“You already did,” said the soft voice.
“This is slightly quicker and a lot less draining. That's
the only difference. It's a good deal faster, it takes less out of
you, it's a bit less hazardous to your health, and the results are a
trifle more consistent. That's all.”

The blade grew frost over its entire surface,
then the frost subsided abruptly to then be as suddenly replaced.
The whole time, the blade was surrounded by what looked like
lightning, but when the storm and the frost was gone, the tray slid
out, this to show a blade at once 'evil', and yet, the instant I
touched it, I knew, this beyond knowing.

“This is only evil if you are a witch,” I
spat. “If you are not a witch, then this – this is a weapon of
your guardians, those sworn by oath and blood to protect you against
those who would destroy you for their amusement.”

I then came to myself to see Deborah on the
floor, and heard her weeping. I knelt down, both blades in my hands,
and asked, “dear, why are you crying?”

“She was giving oath, for she heard what
would happen to her,” said Sarah, “and I think I might have known
where you went this time.”

“Where did I go?”

“It's across the sea,” said Sarah, “either
that, or a place much like it, and I think I know someone else who
will become a monster.”

For some odd reason, though, I pictured
Deborah as a gunship pilot, one who flew one of those strange
delta-winged aircraft which could stay aloft while moving at such
low speeds they seemed to nearly hover – only when this thing
'launched', it went from 'near-hover' to 'rocket-like' in the blink
of an eye.

More, it did some things that were so
strange that I wondered if the pilot was insane, for he or she was
shooting the absolute hell out of someplace. That gun or guns
on that plane seemed to be firing at nearly everything in sight, and
not a single shell missed its target.

Target-rich environment indeed. We would soon
have one, and now I knew why both Sepp, Karl, and the young
lady I was helping to her feet and wiping her tears away needed
blades now.

We would be dealing with rodents, and
sometimes, when a rat mine rose up out of nowhere, there was no time
for a reload.

One wished blades then, as then, that bought
one time enough to do a reload.

I handed Deborah her knife, which she marveled
at, at least until the rainbows glinted off of its edges. She looked
at Sarah, then asked, “is this like yours?”

“I cannot tell them apart,” said Sarah.
“Why?”

“It has this small rose next to the prism
marking,” said Deborah, “and now this thing here. What is it?
It is too big to be a knife, as it makes one of those things from
Machalaat brothers look small for length, it has this strange
gold-colored crossguard that I can tell is not common brass but
something far stronger, it has silver-wire-wrapped places for
gripping, and then it has this rose bloom on the end here.”

“That,” Hendrik said, “would almost be
called a court sword, were we in an old tale.” Pause, then,
“because we are not, and because there are many dark places of
surpassing narrowness, then I think you have a sword fit for them.”

“Yes, dear,” I said. “That there is
'The Sting of the Hornet' – and you're going to use it in very
short order.” I then paused, drank deeply, then said, “come,
those who wish to clear the house of its rats. We've got to show
someone how to use weapons, and then...” Pause. “Then, it is
likely the house will sound like the west school for a while.”

“I thought so,” said Hendrik, with a trace
of a smile. “I thought you would teach people how to shoot that
way.” Pause, then, “don't put shot or balls in any cleaners,
unless they look likely to cause trouble in the future.”

“Oh, we will avoid them unless they glow
red,” said Esther. “I need to practice my shooting, as
I'm going to be putting holes in a lot of witches within, oh,
perhaps ten or twelve days.”

I remained silent, but as I led out the door,
I asked, “leave those two swords where they are. I'll bring back
the two men to pick them up when they have lost their chill –
either that, or I'll send them to pick them up.”